


four walls

by tiesmp3



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Thanks, Vomit Mention, also it’s kinda like canon compliant ISH tbh, and i felt the need to write a lot more words than usual to describe it, as it were yknow because.. the movie, i get into my feelings about this movie, or in my own words, that shit hurted, this is sad uwu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-13 11:22:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14747871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiesmp3/pseuds/tiesmp3
Summary: what you have done is terribleand now you, now younow you carry it with you,you carry it with you,you carry it with you.





	four walls

**Author's Note:**

> hiii wow  
> i watched this movie in class for an assignment but it made me sad and therefore i am expressing my feelings thanks.  
> “four walls (the ballad of perry smith)” by bastille reminds me of anderperry for... i don’t know what reason. maybe it’s because the song title has the word perry in it. but it also makes me feel a lot. so. that’s what the title of this oneshot comes from. i channeled that song while writing this and it was on repeat for hours help.  
> thank u. hope u enjoy  
>  **warnings: vomit, also mentions of blood and suicide and its not graphic but some might think it is take care of urself**

the image was not the first thing that came into todd’s head when charlie woke him up that night.

he’d woken up and thought nothing of it—they were just messing with him—they were just _fucking_ with him—because they had to be, right?

but charlie was crying. and knox and pitts and meeks—crying. and with a sharp intake of breath, todd felt his face fall as he understood the words, connections made in his sleepy brain and gears turning and suddenly he let out the breath, but it was more like a choke, like a sob.

he sat up and looked past charlie, thought maybe there had been some planning involved, maybe they’d all thought it would be funny, and that neil was sitting right there on the bed, grinning like a madman, waiting to give todd a hug and tell him to go right back to bed. but neil’s bed was empty, made neatly the way it had been when todd had gone to sleep, all proper and perfect and so very neil but—

“no,” he managed, and his voice had this quaver, and he looked at the doorway where his friends were and wondered whether they’d get in trouble for being out so late, and then wondered how they’d found out in the first place, and then and then and then—

“neil’s dead,” charlie repeated, as if todd hadn’t heard him the first time, as if he needed another one to stick into his head like hot glue, to drill into his brain with the deepest, most painful screwdriver in the fucking universe.

todd blinked, rapid, repeatedly, looking each and every one of the boys over and hoping one of them would give. hoping one of them would say something. hoping that one of them would be like, “oh, this is a dream,” and todd could go back to sleep and wake up and there would be snow on the windowsill and neil would be turned over, looking at the wall, sleeping, and todd would have to wake him up like always because the alarm clock would never do, and todd could congratulate him on his fantastic performance like he’d meant to do before his father pulled him away and—

his father. god damn his father.

”it—who—who d—who did—who—”

coherency in his words was lacking, as would be expected of a boy who’d just been told his best friend who he loved more than anyone else in the entire world had died.

charlie looked at him with this intensity, this sadness like todd had never seen before in _anyone,_ and todd tried to speak again but he felt himself flush and he just started sobbing, bunching up his sheets to his mouth to muffle the noise. and he _screamed_ , this scream that the sheets could not completely hold, agony and terror and fear and loss, wrapped up with a neat little bow in the loudest thing that anyone had ever seen come out of the body of todd anderson, gripped with something like rage.

”todd, todd—todd, it’s okay, todd,” charlie was saying, and was gripping his shoulders, but it went in one ear and out the other as he cried until his sleepy eyes went dry and all that remained was the hiccuping and the gasping and the sniffling—everyone else’s, too, todd realized as he finally rubbed his dehydrated eyes enough to be able to register what the hell was going on anymore. todd wrestled his shoulders from charlie’s grip, hugging his elbows and then switching back to the bunch of the comforter that had acted as his muzzle.

it felt like a fever dream. he felt lost between two different alternate realities, floating in a space he didnt know at some odd hour of the morning—it could’ve been 10pm or 3am and he would have known no difference. all he knew was there were four other boys in his room when there _should have only been two_.

”who—who k—who ki—” the word wouldn’t come out—it felt like poison in his throat, burning as it tried to come up and as it sank in it was violent, and he cried without tears.

“he did it, todd.”

silence.

”h—he what?”

”he killed himself, todd.”

silence. todd blinked, regarding charlie like a foreigner, squinting as though he didn’t speak the language, swallowing thickly as he let out another deep exhale through his running nose.

then, just, “oh.”

”’oh’?”

todd nodded, looking down at his hands, slick with tears and sweat and then he looked back up and caught eyes with steven because maybe he couldn’t stand to look at charlie anymore and he needed a fresh face. 

“oh,” todd repeated, pursing his lips and running his tongue along his teeth, perusing. on what? nothing. a head full of white. a head full of blank. a head full of static. that’s what he was in that moment.

”he shot himself,” came knox’s voice, and then some other noise that sounded like very angry whispering but todd wouldn’t know any better.

and that’s when the image came into todd’s head. that was when he imagined it. blood spilled on the floor, thick and scarlet, like a rose but so much worse _so much worse that’s a bad analogy you fucking idiot_  and a hole in neil’s body, in his chest or in his temple or in his mouth or right between his eyes. god, todd didn’t know, but all of the images were _there_ , etched into his brain with permanent ink, and he looked up at knox with eyebrows furrowed and mouth slack open and he barely even heard charlie telling knox to “get the fuck out of here” until the only person left in the room with him was charlie.

the silence was worse, todd decided as he started to sway and leaned against the wall of the dorm room for comfort, the wall that neil had almost put his arm through when todd had chased him around after neil stole his notebook. 

so todd filled it. “you know wh-what’s funny, though,” he began, sucking up his upper lip with involuntary tears filling his eyes, “is that i n—i never got to—”

he exhaled, face contorting in a sob again as he rubbed his eyes.

”what?” charlie prompted, and todd looked beyond charlie at the desk that had been neil’s, raising his eyebrows as he shook his head.

”i loved him, you know that?” todd said, all at once, voice shaky and raw and gritty, pure emotion in words that he didn’t even mean to let out in the first place.

”huh,” charlie replied, nodding, and it wasn’t a confused “huh”, or a judgmental “huh”; it was more like a, “huh, i didn’t know that”, which, obviously. 

and then it was the two of them, just nodding, just uncomfortably nodding, and charlie said, “i know you’re hurting more than any of us,” to which todd replied “it’s not a competition, though, he meant the world to all of us,” and then charlie said “he meant the most to you” and todd’s sharp inhale told charlie to stand up from where he was crouched next to todd’s bed.

“please get some sleep, todd, we’re all super worried about you,” charlie managed through a shaky voice that had just appeared, that he’d likely been keeping under wraps in order to keep todd calm, and todd instantly felt this guilt wash over him.

”good night,” todd said, ironically, because it was not a good night or a good day and it would not be a good day the next day or the next or the next, but he wasn’t about to say any of that as charlie closed the door and left him in the dark.

todd didn’t sleep any more, because, obviously. instead, he thought. he thought about neil, and the thought made him sick to his stomach so that he had to crawl over his bed to the trash basket by his desk and pull it towards him and heave into it until he was certain that nothing was going to come out of his body but tears.

so he placed the basket back down on the floor and lay down on his bed, sprawled out on the firm mattress, palms facing up toward the ceiling he traced with wandering eyes that examined cracks that he’d never seen, because when neil was here this room was perfect. these four walls belonged to the two of them, and the walls were bare even though todd had brought pictures to hang up but he liked them that way—bare, lacking any attachment. now, especially. these four walls contained him, but now they acted as a holding cell, a cesspool of shameful emotions and thoughts that his parents would have killed him for.

so he thought about neil again, and he held back the wave of nausea as it threatened to encapsulate him. one can’t avoid a subject when it makes him sick, he thought to himself, and he thought. and he thought.

and he thought about neil’s performance, but that made him think about neil’s father so he stopped thinking about neil’s performance even though neil looked so damn good and so damn _happy_ under the lights which he’d last seen him beaming. that image—pure, soft, full of goodness and light, just so perfectly _neil—_ made him forget, if only for a second, that there was no one in the bed beside him. 

he thought about the desk set, about the thing his parents had gotten him for the second year in a row—a hunk of wood, no sentimental value, just wood and paper and ink and pens and _nothing_ , not even a card. and he thought about how neil had given him a feeling of adrenaline unlike what he’d ever experienced before, and he thought about the rush he’d gotten when he’d catapulted the desk set off the side of the walkway, and the pit in his chest when he thought for a moment about what he’d done and what his parents would do if they found out, and then how neil had smiled at him and he’d forgotten. and they were so close that todd could smell neil’s cologne, and his heart started to race.

and then how he’d just _done it_ , acted on impulse and just pulled neil’s face close to his and kissed him, fast, stolen, and then pulled away just as quick, palms sweating at the mere idea that anyone had been watching them. and how they’d walked back to their room in a silence that made todd want to dissolve into the floor and then they’d gotten there and neil had kissed him again, and todd remembered that they’d never gotten a chance to actually talk about it or do anything about it except he _knew_ that he loved neil and he _thought_ neil loved him but who knew?

not todd. not anyone. not neil. not neil, not neil, not neil, and todd felt himself catapulted back to his dark, dank, sweaty reality of the sheets in his dorm room where he did not have neil’s breathing to lull him to sleep.

so he did not sleep. and he would not sleep. instead, he stood up, bare feet touching a floor that was frozen cold against the sweat coating his skin, and slid his body into the spot at the windowsill that neil had always sat when he was reading or going over lines or just observing.

he watched the snow fall and wondered, distantly, offhandedly, if neil had seen that snow too. before he—well. todd leaned his head against the window, felt the bitter chill of winter on his temple, on the streaks of water down his cheeks, and, if only for a second, he felt as though neil were right there with him, holding him close, making the four bare, concrete walls a cozy home again to hold him until todd had to go out and face the world again without him.

**Author's Note:**

> wow this was a lot to write i dont think ive ever written a oneshot this long  
> i hope you enjoyed!  
> make sure to follow me on my various social medias  
>  **tumblr:**  
>  \- main: dothisthingmp3  
> \- dps (not yet active): timefordaring  
>  **twitter:** wtmbway
> 
> please remember to leave kudos and comment if u enjoyed!! it means the world to me <3


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